


Harry Potter Rare Pair Ficlets/Snippets Under 500 Words

by Colubrina



Series: Rare Pair Harry Potter One Shots [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-01-08 08:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 6,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: A collection of rare pair snippets.  Chapter titles are the pairings for each snippet.





	1. Pansy Parkinson / Tom Riddle

Pansy held him at wand point, a grin on her face - the kind she knew Tom hated most. He reached back, his hands twitching as they tried to summon his own, much beloved, wand.

“Looking for this?” she asked and tossed the broken halves down. His eyes darkened, and she remembered when they’d done that in lust, and maybe even love. It had been tricky, seducing such a renowned legilimens without ever letting him know her true intent, but she’d watched Draco Malfoy, her best friend, crumble at the hands of this man, and she’d played a long game. Revenge was best served after a careful plan. The temperature was irrelevant.

“Pansy,” Tom said, “my love.” His mouth twisted the endearment into mockery, and she tipped her head, acknowledging the near compliment. He smiled at her, but before she could savor the taste of the moment any longer, he added, “You have forgotten one thing, my sweetest one.” 

Her wand flew out of her fingers, and she grasped for it as it skittered through the air to his hand. “I am rather good at wandless magic,” he said, and for the first time since she’d traveled back through time, she was afraid.


	2. Hermione Granger / Regulus Black

Hermione should have known he couldn't behave at a time like this. Most of the time, Regulus maintained the facade of the perfect aristocrat. He could devastate a pretender with a single tilt of his head. He could eviscerate someone he considered inferior with a single word. He might have thrown off the prejudices of his family with one shrug of his well-bred shoulders, but he’d never lost the mannerisms of old money or the sense of his own, innate superiority. 

That all crumbled whenever they saw Sirius. No time travel, no miraculous rescue, nothing could stop the brothers from fighting with the passion of two people who wanted to love one another but didn’t know how.

She and Remus looked at one another, and Remus gave her a slight, apologetic grimace. So much for the idea of a peaceful dinner. She held out her wine glass, and he filled it as Regulus’ volume hiked up another notch, and Sirius drawled that he sounded just like mummy when he yelled that way.

It was good wine, at least. She planned to drink a lot of it.


	3. Theodore Nott / Hermione Granger

“I’m not listening.”

She had her arms crossed and was glaring at him, but she’d also marked the page of her book and set it aside, so he suspected she really would listen. He’d deserve it if she didn’t. He’d disappeared after the Battle of Hogwarts, bare arms no protection against a Ministry gone mad with revenge. It had seemed wisest to go to a bolt hole on the continent before he ended up tossed in Azkaban with so many of his peers, stained by his father’s actions as if the sins of the fathers should be borne by the sons.

It was ironic, really, that after a war where everyone had shouted from every rooftop that blood didn’t matter, it did. You were blessed, or doomed, by your parents. They lauded Potter as a hero, “Just like his parents, rest their souls.” They condemned Draco as a monster with, “What would you expect from a Malfoy?” Hermione had mostly escaped that because no one knew what her great-grandparents had said and done. There were bad things about being Muggle-born, surely enough, but it wasn’t all a curse. He’d envied her that sometimes. She flew or failed by her own merits.

“I still love you?” he said, the words half a question as if he could buy his way back into graces he didn’t deserve via honesty. The way her mouth trembled and her eyes softened suggested he’d taken the right approach.

“Damn it, Theo,” she said. “It’s been two years.”

Before he could offer an explanation or excuse, she’d flung herself into his arms, and he held on, home at last.


	4. Susan Bones / Theodore Nott

Everyone had thought Theo had joined the Death Eaters or died, yet here he was in blood-soaked clothes, arms stretched out, and not a scar on them. Susan’s hand flew to her mouth as she looked at the man she’d never thought to see again. She’d certainly never hoped to see him without the snake and skull disfiguring the arm he’d wrapped around her when he’d promised he’d be back. He smiled, the same familiar, lopsided smile that had always set her heart racing, then collapsed in a heap at her feet; it would figure that even as the returning prodigal, he’d be trouble. He always had been. 

She struggled to get the body inside her door where no one would see it, dragging him over the threshold and hoping against reason that most of the blood on him wasn’t his. If it were, she didn’t think she’d be able to save him, and it wasn’t as if she could call a Healer. Half the people in Britain would kill him for his bloodline; the other half would kill him for, it would seem, escaping it.


	5. Blaise Zabini / Hermione Granger

It was clear neither of them would ever trust him again. Not that he could blame them, but it still hurt. He could explain until the sun set, rose, then set again that he’d had to do it to protect them both, but that didn’t matter. 

Blaise gathered Hermione into his arms and glared at their captor, their liberator, their enemy. “Unlocking the door doesn’t make you the good guy,” he said as he made his way out. “Watch your back, Malfoy, because when this is over if you’re still alive, I’m coming for you.”

“Let’s just go,” Hermione said. Her voice shook with pain and exhaustion. “Otherwise, he might change his mind.”

“Gutless wonder,” Blaise said as he pushed his way past the man who’d been his friend once.

Draco watched them go before he turned to plod his way back up the stairs to his room. He wished someone could unlock his door.


	6. Remus Lupin & Hermione Granger

“Penny for your thoughts?” Remus asked with a smile in his voice. Hermione had been distant since she’d come back from visiting Hogwarts, and he wanted to cheer her up.

The look she gave him made his gut clench.

“I was going through the archives,” she said. “Many of Snape’s memories are preserved, and I wanted to consult them as research for the book I’m writing on the rise of the second generation of Death Eaters.”

Remus nodded. He suspected he knew what was coming.

“You let them bully that boy,” she said. The words were soft, but each one sliced into his skin with more pain than any transformation had ever caused him. “You stood by while your friends made his life hell, three or four on one, and you did nothing.”

“I - “ he began.

“I don’t want anything to do with you,” she said. The words had the finality of a decision she’d been mulling, and he knew there would be no arguing her out of it. “I want you gone by morning.”


	7. Antonin Dolohov / Luna Lovegood

“I still maintain that it's your own fault that your fingerprints burned off." Luna had tied her hair back with what looked like homespun yarn. A bit of straw still stuck out of the lumpy, grey strands, and she’d wrapped more of the same stuff around one wrist where it sat, a lesson to everyone who thought drop spindles were easy.

Antonin happened to know she spun curses and wards into those skeins of wool. A lesson to anyone who thought Luna was daft.

“I did what you told me to,” he said. He leaned back against her worktable and crossed his arms. She’d regrown the skin but that didn’t mean burning his hands hadn’t hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and the sworls that marked him as a unique person were gone. “Something went wrong.”

“Well, it _is_ experimental,” Luna conceded. “But did you get him?”

Antonin laughed. Ron Weasley had never known what hit him. One by one the people who’d laughed at her were disappearing. This one caught a rare disease. Uncurable. So sad. That one had an apparition accident. Ron had been caught in a fire every investigator would think was the result of a spell gone wrong.

Well, it had gone wrong. Antonin rubbed at his newly smooth fingertips. They felt eerie. Haunted.

“You are my favorite,” Luna said. “And I _am_ sorry you were hurt.” When she smiled her grey eyes turned the exact color of the clouds that presaged a storm in the northern sea. After his time in Azkaban, Antonin knew that color well. Knew those seas.

He looked into her eyes and wanted to drown. “I’m glad,” he whispered. He’d served a dark lord once, but Luna was the true night. Luna was the true queen. Luna was the one who owned him, body and soul. “I’m so glad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from a prompt infalliblesbian gave me on tumblr


	8. Luna/Draco

All Luna could ever think when she looked at him was how recessive he was. Not that she was a collection of dominant genes herself, but Draco always looked as if he had been drained of almost all color. Even in the aftermath of battle, he shone like a star. Pale. Pale. Pale. His eyes didn’t even have enough colour to be blue. His hair was more white than blond.

Of course, right now he was also covered in blood and ash.

“What are you staring at?” he snapped, jerking her out of her reverie about colour and fate and how we become what’s down deep in our blood whether we want to or not. He certainly had and hadn’t wanted to. The Mark on his arm proved he was his father’s son. The lost look on his eyes confirmed he was floating on a sea of someone else’s making.

“You,” Luna said because it was true. She was staring at him, which was rude, and she ought to feel awkward and bad she’d gotten caught, but she didn’t. “Hair doesn’t want to be blond,” she said. “You have to tell it twice, but if you do, it will listen.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. It wasn’t an unreasonable question given the circumstances. She was rather touched he asked, though. Most people just dismissed her as too crazy to bother with. That made her try to give him a gift.

“You can tell your heart love twice too,” she said. “Hatred wants to win, but you can force it down. Be the unobvious thing that wells up from the deep. Be the unexpected. You are in every other way. You can be in this one too.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay, you must have gotten hit on the head or something.” He looked around, presumably trying to find a Mediwitch, but in the triage going on around them, she was not important. Draco realized that almost at once, and his mouth twisted in a grimace. “Why don’t you just come sit with me out of the way, see if you feel better in a bit.”

“That would be nice,” Luna said. She slipped her hand in his. “You are more than you know.”

“From the depths,” he said. The words were half a sneer, but only half. The other half was worry for her and maybe a little bit of hope for himself.

She squeezed his hand. He didn’t understand yet, but he would. “Exactly,” she said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from a prompt by asdasdfangirl on tumblr


	9. Harry/Pansy

She’d been trying not to see him for an hour. Harry Potter. Savior of the wizrding world and he was sitting alone in a bar where he was just about guaranteed not to be recognized. Muggles had no idea who’d stood between them and near anniliation at the hands of a madman and that made Muggle London the perfect place for a hero tired of being fawned on.

It also made it the perfect place for a villain tired of being spit on.

She shrugged her leather jacket back on and went up to the bar to pay her tab. She tried to keep herself in the shadows. If he didn’t want to be seen, well, she’d respect that. And it wasn’t as if she wanted him to see her. She’d have to find a new place to go. She left her change on the bar - tipping well smoothed the way in both worlds, she’d found - and turned to go when she heard her name.

“Parkinson?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and turned. This was what she’d wanted to avoid. “Potter,” she said.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said with a slur she knew. She’d heard it in her own voice often enough, though not tonight. He was three sheets to the wind. Just fucking great. He leaned forward and half fell on her. “They’re nice here,” he said.

She looked around. If a minute ago she’d have given anything to avoid his usual hangers-on, now she wanted to find them but, just her luck, no Granger. No Granger, none of the endless Weasleys, not a single witch or wizard in sight and the moron draped across her was reaching for his wand.

“Wanna show you somethin’,” he said.

“Not here,” she said. She’d have to take him home and, god, she had no idea where he lived so she’d have to take him to _her_ home. She hitched an arm under him and tried to pull him along toward the exit. She couldn’t leave him here if for no other reason that when the memory wiping aurors came around asking questions, the bartender would be able to describe her. She didn’t want the Ministry showing up at her doorstep and, irony of ironies, that meant bringing this one there.

“Yer pretty,” he said.

“Yeah?” she asked. If she got him to the corner, she could side along him safely to her flat. “Someone really screwed you up.”

“M’aunt,” he said. “And uncle.”

Funny, she would have expected him to say Dumbledore. “Fascinating,” she said. She had him out the door now, and in just a few feet she would be home free. “How’d you like to tell me all about them in my living room?”

He beamed at her with the most absurd green eyes she’d ever seen. No one should be allowed to have eyes like that without a charm enhancement. “That’d be swell,” he said, and almost fell face first into the pavement.

“Swell, huh?” she muttered, pulled her wand, and apparated them away. Swell was exactly what this wasn’t. And as soon as he was sober, she was sure he’d agree.


	10. Draco/Ginny

Draco couldn’t believe he was here. Not that he was at Pansy’s wedding. He’d always rather assumed he’d be at that, and for a year or so when they’d been teenagers he’d assumed he’d be the groom. That hadn’t happened - thank god - but he hadn’t expected her to fall for Saint Potter. Watching his schoolyard rival, who had the bad taste to also be a bonafide hero, marry a woman he could technically call his ex-girlfriend hadn’t been the best wedding ever. 

It wasn’t even open bar. Could they be any tackier? He pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket and began to sort through, counting out what he needed to get a stiff drink. “Firewhisky on the rocks, please,” he said to the bartender. He squinted at the shelf. “And not the 8-year. Give me 18-year if you have it.”

“Make it two.”

He turned to look at the bridesmaid. Ginny Weasley. Pansy must have picked out the shade of pink in that dress on purpose to be as unflattering as possible. The bartender was giving him an politely quizzical look - did he really plan to pay for this woman’s drink? - and Draco nodded ever so slightly. He wasn’t such a boor as to say no, especially not when the woman in question was a beautiful as Ginevra Weasley. Even if she was dirt poor. And a Weasley. And...

“Weren’t you dating Potter?” he asked.

“Make mine neat,” she said to the bartender, then, to him, she said, “Yes.”

Draco leaned up against the oak bar and smiled down at her. She was so tiny. He always remembered her on her broom, where she was chaos in motion. It seemed odd to have to tilt his chin down to see her. Of course, it did afford him a spectacular look down her dress.

“That dress is hideous,” he said.

She plucked at the fabric and made a face. “It was pricey, too,” she said. “And I’ll never wear it again.”

That he could believe. He took a sip, then a second, then a third for courage and said, “Want to leave it on my floor?”

She picked up her drink and weighed the glass in her hand. He half expected her to toss it in his face. If he was lucky, just the liquid, as much as that would be a waste of good whiskey. If he were unlucky, she’d throw the entire, very heavy, glass at him.

As it turned out, he was more than lucky. She drained the shot with one smooth motion, set the glass back down with a solid thunk, and said, “I assume you aren’t living with your parents.”

“God, no.” He’d fled that place as soon as possible. 

“Then let’s go.”

The dress looked no less pink and no less hideous on his floor. But Ginny, as it turned out, looked quite fetching in his dress shirt. And his bed. And his life.


	11. Draco/Neville

Draco picked up the potted herbs and tried not to show how much he hated this. It was dirty. It was wet. And it was cold. And Neville showed exactly no signs of being the slightest bit tired of pulling scraggly little things out of pots and putting them in larger holes in the ground. And he was supposed to fill the holes back up with dirt. Wet dirt. Dirty dirt.

This was what he got for saying, sure, they could do anything Neville wanted. He’d assumed it would be something... else. Something more indoors related. Not that he didn’t like the outdoors. He did. Outdoors was fine. It just hadn’t been what he’d had in mind when he’d announced he was at Neville’s disposal.

Neville, who was wiping his hands on his trousers and looking far too smug. “Having fun?” he asked.

Draco bit his tongue to avoid saying anything nasty.

Neville’s smirk got wider, and he began to suspect he’d been had. “Well,” Neille said. “Time to go wash up.”

Washing up Draco was a fan of. Washing all this dirt off his skin and his hands and, dear god, water had soaked through his trousers and even his knees were dirty.

“There’s only one thing,” Neville said.

“What?” Draco expected Neville to produce another flat of herbs.

“My flat only has one shower.”


	12. Theo/Luna

“I didn’t think you were the type of person to be found here.” 

Theo knows the words come off as belligerent. He cringes at his own hostility but it isn’t as if he’s wrong. They’d made this place, kids of Death Eaters, kids whose parents were sympathizers. The warehouse looked abandoned from the outside, and what dereliction didn’t manage a few charms did. People didn’t come here by accident and that was on purpose. They’d needed a place where strangers didn’t come up and spit hatred into their faces and if the place looked almost as miserable within the walls as it did without, well, the denizens weren’t a happy group.

Except this one.

Blonde, pale, and shockingly out of place, Luna Lovegood turned from the painting she’d been poking at. “Hestia said there was an art opening,” she said, as if that made sense. As if Hestia Carrow would be passing out invitations to the good girls and boys who’d come out of the war as heroes. 

“Did you think you might not be welcome?” He sounded like the nightmare everyone thought he was just because of his birth. Just because of his House.

She looked at him for a long time, her grey eyes blinking so slowly he watched them, mesmerized. “No,” she said at last. “I was invited.”

He didn’t know what to say to that and stood there, silent, as she turned back to the painting. He was about to go when she held her finger right above the black dab of paint he’d added in a fit of rage when his father had returned his letter to Azkaban unopened. “This hurts,” she said. 

He swallowed hard and took a step closer. She had a jumper on with weird little balls knitted into it. It was the lumpiest article of clothing he’d ever seen, and the fuzz from one of those lumps brushed against his arm, tickling it. Her finger still hovered in front of the paint. “Don’t you think?” she asked.

“It did,” he said. 

She laced her fingers through his and squeezed. “Show me the next one,” she said. He should have pulled away. Logic said to pull away. Instead he lead her along the wall. When he glanced over at the folding table that served as the bar, Hestia raised a chipped glass in his direction.


	13. Theo/Hermione

Being sorted in Slytherin wasn’t such a bad thing for her. Not bad at all. Hermione pretended to focus on the Herbology lecture, a dull repetition of the assigned reading because the plant was dangerous and Professor Sprout couldn’t trust they’d all done the homework, but really, she was watching Theodore Nott. Tall. Clever. A bit awkward. He had a novel propped up inside his Herbology textbook, but when the Professor asked him a question he answered it in his quiet, polite voice.

All in all, very much her type.

She spared a thought for what other houses would have had to offer and shuddered. Ravenclaw she could have almost enjoyed, and no one disliked a Hufflepuff, but Gryffindor. Sure, she’d have been spared all those duels where she proved over and over and over again that being Muggle born didn’t mean she was weaker. But the boys. Endless streams of Weasleys with bad table manners and garish hair. That Potter, constantly in one sort of trouble or other (and she wished Malfoy would just shag him and get it over with. The obsession was getting old). And Cormac McClaggen. He’d cornered her in the halls again that morning and, his eyes on her chest, asked if she wanted to go to Hogsmeade with him.

She most emphatically did not.

No. Theodore Nott was better. Much better. And he must have felt her eyes on him because he turned and glanced at her. She smiled, a bit nervously because who likes to be caught staring, and his mouth lifted in an answering grin.

“Hogsmeade?” she mouthed.

The grin got bigger. The nod was minuscule, but Sprout coughed to get attention back on her, he turned around, and they both pretended they hadn’t read the assignment three times and taken notes. Hers were color coded. His, she had noted last night as they sat in the common room and did their work silently but near one another, had not been.

Well, he wasn’t _perfect._

But Slytherin certainly was.


	14. Harry/Pansy

“I can’t give forgiveness to someone who never asked for it.” Harry could tell he was slurring a little. That’s what happened when you’d drank as much as he had but the war haunted him, and anniversaries of this day or that day seemed to fill half the year. Everything was a memorial and he was good and tired of it and, hell, it wasn’t as if he had to pay for his own drinks. Every last wizard and witch in Britain wanted to buy him a drink and they all wanted to talk to him. Somehow, though, he’d never considered that list of “every” might include Pansy Parkinson.

“Like you’d listen,” she said. She drew her mouth into a tight line. The expression turned her cheekbones into fragile wings. It made her vulnerable. She paused as if she were going to say something else, then turned and walked away.

Harry looked at the door. He could see a line of gold stealing in at the bottom edge, borrowed riches from the street lamps. “Wait,” he said, though there was no way she could have heard him through that oak. He stood up and pushed his way through good people, people who wanted to congratulate him, people who didn’t understand and went out into the dark night to find the one who, just maybe, did.


	15. Harry/Pansy

“I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”

Pansy is swinging her feet over the bridge and watching the water go by. The sun is out but the last three days have been rain and the stream - almost a river now - rushes by. It’s a torrent. It’s uncrossable. She swings her feet and leans into the wooden rails and the sun is hot on the back of her neck.

“I guess I did,” Harry says. He’s next to her. They don’t touch, not yet. Maybe tonight, after a few drinks, they will. Maybe then he’ll work up the courage to brush against her hand. Her leg. Her mouth. Or maybe not. Gryffindor courage turns out to good at slaying monsters and not so good at facing down girls.

Or maybe she’s more frightening than any monster. She rather likes that idea. She fancies the image of herself as fierce, as intimidating, as un-cowable. It’s a lot nicer than the actual memories of herself as the girl who didn’t fight back. History exists to be rewritten.

She swings her feet and thinks about the past and one shoe falls off. It hits the water with a splash. She lets out a gasp, then a laugh as the pink of her trainer tumbles away in the grey water. It’s a dot of color moving further and further and neither of them think to grab their wands until it’s almost out of sight. 

“I could -” Harry starts to say.

“Carry me back?” she says. She stands up. “How positively chivalrous, Potter. How fucking quaint.” 

She waits for him to scoop her up. 


	16. Marcus Flint / Hermione Granger

“What did you do?”Hermione could hear the way her voice was escalating up to a shriek and she tried to remember what Ginny had said about staying calm in an argument.“How could you possibly have caused such a mess?”

Of course, bloody be-damned Ginny didn’t live with a man who tracked mud through the flat, dropped reeking gear on the floor, and grinned at her with that cursed smile showing the one crooked tooth no amount of magic seemed to be able to straighten. “Hermione,” Marcus began, wheedling in his voice and enough mischief she knew – she knew! – he’d done it all on purpose. “It’s Saturday and we’re all going out.I came back to get you, get cleaned up,maybe have a - “

“No!” She almost exploded.“No quickie.”

The grin got bigger and her heart rate sped up and she knew she was getting flustered.Curse him and the way that smile always got him what he wanted.He knew it too.There wasn’t a way to cheat to victory Marcus Flint hadn’t found and if she weren’t the same way she’d be so much angrier.As it was, well, magic would clean it all up in an instant as soon as one or the other of them cared to bother.

She turned her back and crossed her arms and waited and, predictably, Marcus slid his arms around her and rubbed a sweaty filthy cheek against her.“Slow then?” he whispered in her ear.“We don’t have to be at the pub for two hours.”


	17. Tom Riddle / Abraxas Malfoy

I found Tom first.He was brilliant.Even in a school filled with clever boys and sharp witted girls - though I admit I’ve never been drawn to the fairer sex - he left us all behind. He’d throw back an arm and his patched robes would splay out over the couch in the common room and he’d ask a question about magic and my breath would catch at the implications.We were all scrambling to memorize tricks and incantations and he was seeing the way the world fit together, blood and book and bell and candle.He made it new.He made it gleam.I’ve never known his equal; I don’t expect I ever will. I know that you won’t.

Are you getting this all down?They will tell lies about him, you know.They will paint him as a villain, or maybe a saint. I can’t predict which, and it really doesn’t matter.They will silence him any way they can. I know power and I know how it takes and corrupts and absorbs.Malfoys live and breathe power - it’s why he wanted me - and I know what the world he is trying to save will do to him. He is too radical.Too demanding. Too brutal.

200 years ago it didn’t matter.Muggles?Being afraid of them was like being afraid of a boggart: something for children and housewives who spend too much time reading The Daily Prophet.But now?We’ve hidden ourselves away and stopped acknowledging them, and while we sat around and enjoyed ourselves they made a world that no unforgiveable can tame.

We are in trouble.

You are not writing.I brought you here so you could write this down. 

Did I love him?Does it matter?I tied my life to his. I tied my family’s life to his plans.He used to cup his hand along the back of my neck and murmur, _Do you know what you do to me_ as if it weren’t obvious.He always tasted like flat beer, something some of the life had gone out of.A little stale, a little rancid. It was odd, I suppose, but I never questioned it. Love wasn’t the point.Power was, and I traded him mine for what I thought was his, what I thought was ours.Our world’s.Our people’s.

Do not let them silence him.This Pox will take me before he can see it through. I don’t know how I got such a ridiculous disease.I am too young for such a thing.Tom toasted me at our last meeting._My old friend_, he said.Y_ou have always known me best.Without you, I would be lost._

I beg of you, do not let him get lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to jackwhitesgirl on Tumblr for the prompt.


	18. Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to ff-sunset-oasis for the prompt on Tumblr

Most people loved the little magic countdowns on their wrists.They could look down and see what they assumed was the proof they’d find true love and spend 70 years together. It was reassuring. It was hopeful.

Astoria hated hers.

She remembered with too much clarity the day her governess has thought it would be a good idea to practice maths using that number.“We’ll just look at today, look at the day on your wrist, and calculate the day your soulmate will pass through the veil,” she’d said in a chirpy voice.Daphne - lucky Daphne - had a day so far in the future it seemed eternal to their young minds.

Astoria did the sums three times.She was good at maths but she didn’t like the answer so she kept trying again, hoping she’d carried something wrong, or transcribed a digit.

May 2, 1998.

“That can’t be right,” the governess had said. “That’s ... .”She did the problem in her head and her smile got tight and sad.“Well,” she said with a chirp that had become false. “Many people never find their soulmate.” 

Was that supposed to make it better?

At Hogwarts Astoria crossed her arms and scowled at other girls as they giggled about their dates and who could their soulmates be.Draco Malfoy, of all people, understood. He’d slouch in the common room and make fun of the twittering girls and their romantic notions.

“When does yours die?”Pansy demanded one day, tired of his mockery.Draco knew how to find people’s weaknesses and she’d had it with his knife thrusts and quips about how they all obsessed over death.

“May 2, 1998,” Draco said.He quirked his brows up at their shocked silence and sneered his best Malfoy sneer.

Astoria looked at him curiously. “Strange,” she said into the faux sorrow of the room. “Mine’s the same one.” 

“That is weird,” Draco said.They were friends after that.Friends who never mentioned the number that bound them, or how it crept closer with each year.Each month.Each day.Until they stood, hand in hand, and looked out at the bodies laid in the Great Hall.The rows of unfinished lives stretched out in front of them.

“Did you ever find out who?”Draco asked.

Astoria shook her head.

He squeezed her hand more tightly and said, “Me neither.”

Maybe it was nicer not knowing when the person you loved would die, she thought looking at him. He had ash on his face, and his clothes smelled of fire.She leaned up against him there in the hall and decided things were better with a little uncertainty.You couldn’t live your life in the shadow of death. She wouldn’t from now on.


	19. Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to superflarre for the prompt on Tumblr. Originally posted on FFN in June of 2017.

The paper was filled with nothing but accolades and every time he read one it hurt.A sensible person would have refused to look.A smart person would have left well enough alone.No one, however, had ever accused Draco Malfoy of being smart or sensible when it came to Harry Potter and so he read them all. 

Worse, he sought them out.

He hunched over papers and magazines and read and read and read until he wanted to scream because everyone loved Potter.Everyone had something to say about him.Almost every person who’d ever been in a classroom with the rotter had a quote somewhere praising him. The Daily Prophet had left no proverbial stone unturned. The whole field of Britain was nothing but uprooted rocks with praise for Harry Potter under them all. 

No one had asked him anything, of course.Their rivalry and mutual dislike was too well known. Somehow that was galling.Someone should have asked.He’d have been so gracious.Oh, Potter, can’t say a bad thing about him.Schoolboy stuff, of course, but he’s a good egg.

But no one gave him the chance to be gracious.No one mentioned him at all. He read every line and there wasn’t a single word about him, how he hadn’t turned Potter over,how he could have, how he’d saved his life.

“Bastard,” Draco muttered, shoving aside yet another paper with yet another article.He wished, just once, he could read Potter’s name and feeling nothing.“I want to feel nothing,” he said out loud.He said the word nothing again, as if to see if it felt like a lie.“Nothing.”

Nothing would be better than this burning almost jealousy, this wish that Potter would notice him, would single him out the way he did Weasley and Granger and Longbottom and every other person but not him. 

“Nothing.”

It felt like a lie.It tasted like falsehood and ruin and loathing. It felt like the hot burn of water at his eyes because he was the one who was nothing.He’d ruined it all, all from the start, and now there was nowhere to go and nothing to say and no way to begin again.

“I wish,” he said and then stopped.There was no point.It was all over now.If anyone asked, he’d be gracious.He’d say all the right things, stiff upper lip, enough emotional repression to open a shop selling the stuff.He’d never let on how much he just wanted to be noticed.How much he’d always wanted Potter to see him.To like him.

To love him.


	20. Harry Potter/Draco Malfo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on FFN in April of 2019.

Draco stood under the withering lash of Harry Potter’s tirade without flinching. He’d endured Voldemort in his house, the war, and the aftermath where he was not quite a criminal but also never really welcomed. He reminded people too much of what had happened, what they had done, what they might have done in his place.  
Everyone liked to pretend they’d be the hero.

Usually, he walked away from someone hissing at him in the street like this. He’d done it more than once and left old biddies and self-righteous wizards squawking after him. He didn’t owe them his time. He wasn’t their absolution. But Potter… Potter, he’d do the courtesy of pretending to listen to. The man really had been a hero, he’d saved the day, and not a night went by that Draco Malfoy didn’t trace his fingers over the faded Mark on his arm and thank every god that might be listening that Potter had won.

Potter, who stopped his rant, ran a hand through the hair he never did seem to brush, and glared. “Are you even listening to me.”

“I’m a coward and scum and should be in Azkaban? Draco guessed. He’d tuned Potter out after only a few minutes and focused instead on the color of his eyes behind the glasses that could use a good wipe down. The green was remarkable.

“You aren’t.”

“Listening?” Draco shrugged. That was true enough. “But it seemed to make you feel better.” He hesitated for a moment. “Do you want to get a pint?”

Harry stared at him, then sat down on a bench and started to laugh. “Sure,” he said. “Sure. Why not.”


End file.
